J.P.C.

Editorial Notes

Bombs for New Year’s

(January 1932)

Written: January 1932.Source:The Militant, Vol. V No. 2 (Whole No. 98), 9 January 1932, p. 4.Transcription/HTML Markup:Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.Public Domain:This work is in the under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Marxists’ Internet Archive as your source, include the URL to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.

It looks like a big year for the bomb and dynamite racket, if one can judge by the spectacular start that has been made by the people who specialize in it The new year was ushered in with the loud explosion of a bomb in Pennsylvania, and by still noisier propaganda about other bombs which were found or planted or imagined in various parts of the country. Connected with this was the inevitable hue and cry about a conspiracy of the Communists, the anti-fascists and other radicals. The bombs – it is claimed – were addressed to a number of the leading Fascists of the country. Of course, none of the Mussolini agents were injured. They never are. The miraculous escape of the intended “victims” in these affairs is as unfailing as the charge that the radical workers are the guilty parties.

Nine times out of ten – or, better, 99 times out of a hundred – this is the real meaning of the “discovery” of bombs and dynamite: to lay the ground for an attack against the workers and to railroad some individuals as an example. This is American labor history. And the Mussolini regime has introduced this “American plan” all over Europe in the fight against the anti-Fascist movement. If we take the New Year’s hullabaloo together with the “dynamite plot” in the New York harbor there is every ground for the assumption that a new offensive against the workers, introduced with a series of typical frame-ups – is in preparation.

The Daily Worker speaks of the latest bomb scare as the prelude to an attack on the Communist Party, and limits its concern and protest to that. If the new machinations take on real proportions a blow at the Party will undoubtedly be the objective. But the specific point of attack in the present instance seems to be the anti-Fascist movement; and the New York harbor affair is aimed at the Tidewater Boatmen’s Union. For our part, these circumstances do not in the least mitigate the danger nor the necessity of fighting the conspiracies. We are on the side of any worker, or any workers’ organization, regardless of its political complexion, in such a situation.

Communists make a fatal error when they limit their protests to cases of direct attack against their own party. Such questions must be approached from a principle, that is, from a class point of view. There is practical wisdom, also, in this attitude. The Communists cannot fight successfully alone against an onslaught of the capitalists. They need the support of the working class. The more readiness they show to join in the defense of any workers’ organization under attack the stronger become their own claims for similar support, and the more readily will they receive it.